A tour of San Diego alleysJack Whalen hands me a beer. “I’m king of this alley,” Whalen says, then points west. “Down there, the king of that next alley is Tom Sweet. He’s 97.” Whalen …

He loves the people no one wants"I'm used to voices downtown, of agony and pain and just dysfunction, and I had the window down a little so I could hear. I look and there's a …

More or less sudden mountainsThe rocks in and around San Diego have composed amazing, fiery stories for a very long time. An ancient ocean once covered this county; volcanoes used to spew here; and more …

Otay before 50,000 homes In 1954 I sat on the school bus every day next to my best friend, Mark Robson. The ride home from Montgomery Elementary School in Otay was a straight shot east …

Sequester yourself in the Secret Ranch Welcome to “The Secret Ranch,” a 12-acre estate with more than 12,400 square feet of living space under roof located in the exclusive Covenant of Rancho Santa Fe. “This …

Destination Lindbergh; destruction Old Town "It would transform the way travelers use our airport, reduce traffic congestion around [Lindbergh Field] and take advantage of the airport’s close proximity to Interstate 5 by providing access right …

Ten Reasons Why You’d Have to Be Crazy to Live in Borrego Springs To paraphrase what Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there is no there there — no people (population: about 3000), no movie …

The removal of the Cupeños from Warner Springs Beginning on November 21, 1851, the Indians burned Warner’s buildings; stole his cattle, horses, and sheep; and killed nine Americans. The revolt was soon put down, Cupa …

Over $1 million per subsidized job Then-Governor Jeb Bush seduced La Jolla’s Scripps Research Institute with almost $600 million in various kinds of incentives, both from the state and from Palm Beach County. The facility, …

Olaf Wieghorst trusted the wrong man Almeida got his start at George Thackeray’s gallery in the late ’50s. He and his wife Grace agreed to talk to me at their house in Ocean Beach, a …

The Lost Roads of San Diego In 1944, the land between Midway Drive and Sports Arena Boulevard (then Frontier Street) became combed with the short streets of a wartime housing project. After the war, transients …

Janet, My Mother, and Me “We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth …

When Dick Nixon Came to Town San Diego entrepreneur Arnholt Smith, one of Nixon’s earliest supporters, remembered a melancholy evening in the early ’60s when Nixon was holding a meeting and asked him to get …

Roman Abramovich Yacht on San Diego’s Embarcadero Two helicopter pads, pool, spa, hot tub... It was borrowed by Madonna back in 2010 (according to Luxist.com), when she was filming her movie about the Duke of …

Leavin' On a Jet Plane Tax dollars fund airport blitzkrieg. The stealth campaign that spends your money to buy your vote. CEO Thella Bowens proudly pointed to the poll's key finding: that public support for …

National City – a Mayor Daley-type political machine To the south of San Diego, within range of the shadows cast by the Coronado Bridge, lies National City. Frequently described as the “backlot" of San Diego, …

Don't Embarrass the Hells Angels They will not tolerate someone pretending to be a member who is not really a member. By Eva Knott, July 25, 2012 Roman Abramovich Yacht on San Diego’s Embarcadero It …

San Diego State's growing contempt for undergrads “We have pulled resources out of undergraduate education in order to build expensive, elite PhD programs that cater to very few students proportionately." By Joe Deegan, March 27, …

Giovanni's leaves cribbage fans homeless I used to come to Giovanni’s at the turn of the century when they were located at Balboa Avenue about a mile west from the I-805 freeway. I remember playing …

Salvation Mountain The Slabs are Slab City, three miles east of Niland, between the sultry Salton Sea and the Chocolate Mountains. Years ago the concrete slabs supported the barracks of Camp Dunlap, where General George …

Feds plan to make pond of Tijuana sewage Just how smelly are thirteen acres of raw sewage? Soon, very soon, we shall find out. Next Monday a federal agency is planning to start building an …

San Diego Polo Club site developed by Heaven's Gate Exclusiveness breeds itself, so it’s little wonder that when the San Diego Polo Club in Rancho Santa Fe needed a Web page designed, they turned to …

General store ledgers tell how people lived in Old Town Finding which store the ledger came from involved detective work. In 1864, there were only two general merchandise stores, one in Old Town, the other …

From Toro Peak to Fonts Point, barely Their plan was to start at Toro Peak, in the Santa Rosa Mountains just north of Borrego Springs, hike along the mountainous spine over Rabbit Peak and Villager …

The blackest of crimes committed against Warner Ranch Indians Lummis rode past sturdy, whitewashed adobe houses with thatched roofs. When he reached the center of the village, anxious eyes approached. The Cupeños were desperate for …

How Bauder came to write for the Reader: My wife and I had bought Colorado land in 1999, and hired a builder who constructed our home on 36 acres. It was ready in early 2003. …

The federal deficit will be a staggering $1 trillion next year. Corporate debt is an astonishing $6.3 trillion. Globally, the derivatives market, which nearly killed us in 2008, could be $1 quadrillion. Speculation is rampant …

In 1960, I entered the journalism profession with a Master’s degree and an addiction to work in a field I already knew that I loved: writing and reporting. I had worked 40 hours a week …

Median San Diego household income jumped five percent to $76,662 last year, but the main reason is that more people per household were working, according to United States Census Bureau data revealed this morning (September …

The California Department of Insurance yesterday (September 11) issued a cease and desist order against the National Rifle Association (NRA). The association sponsors Carry Guard, which it describes as a “membership carry program” offering comprehensive …

"If you want to work, there is no excuse for not getting into the job market now,” says Phil Blair, executive owner of Manpower San Diego. Blair, the local employment guru, is talking about the …

Tito Capobianco, the autocrat who brought San Diego Opera — and the late soprano Beverly Sills — to prominence, died September 8 at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida, to which he had retired in 2000. He was 87. …

At a time when the current Washington D.C. administration is proposing deep cuts in housing welfare, the staggering rent costs for low-income San Diegans merits focus. According to a Zillow release this week, low-income San …

There’s an old song, “Ya gotta be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls.” The words are now being changed to “Ya gotta be a pro sports team owner to get your …

San Diego comes in 24th out of 182 in the best cities in which to raise a family, according to a new report by WalletHub, which does statistical studies of United States places to work …

Joseph MacRae, who sponsored the flying of anti-Chargers/anti-Spanos banners over StubHub Center in Carson (L.A. County) last year when the Chargers were playing there, intends to repeat this year if he can raise the money. …

Can scientific purity and entrepreneurial greed coexist? San Diego is an ideal testing ground for that question, because it is one of three biotech centers in the United States, and biotech companies, dominated by scientists, …

Arch-conservative San Diegan Dinesh D’Souza is riding high these days: his new book, Death of a Nation, this week is number 5 on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list. The book posits that Republican …

The Oakland-based independent Institute for College Access and Success this month released a study showing that 350,000 two-year or four-year grads of for-profit colleges left school in 2012 with a collective $7.5 billion of debt. …

Remember when Larry Lucchino and John Moores said that a fat ballpark subsidy for a team owned by a mega-millionaire was a civic good — something akin to godliness and cleanliness? After getting San Diego …

The county unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in July, down from a revised 3.7 percent in June and from 4.4 percent a year earlier, according to the California Employment Development Department. During the month, total …

Maybe some relief is coming for home buyers. San Diego County home price listings dropped 20 percent in June, according to Zillow.com. Among the 35 largest United States metro areas, the only larger drop was …

A now-defunct Chula Vista firm, RMR Asset Management, and its head, Ralph Riccardi, used fraudulent schemes to deprive individual investors of municipal bonds, according to a suit filed Tuesday (August 14) in federal court. Individual, …

In March of this year, Southern California Edison, the major owner of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant, revealed that a shipment of canisters in which the company is burying nuclear waste near the ocean …

After the housing bubble burst in the 2008 period, the United States has been very slow to replenish the housing stock, or inventory. The partly explains the rise in home prices. San Diego County is …

The University of California at San Diego is the second best educational institution in the nation, according to a new ranking of universities and colleges by Money magazine. Among the factors going into the study …

Local media are reporting this morning (August 9) that the initiative to raise the hotel tax to expand the convention center and purportedly fix the roads and help the homeless doesn’t have enough valid signatures …

On July 25, stock of San Diego-based, deeply-troubled Bridgepoint Education closed at $8.09. It had been as low as $5.31 in the past 52 weeks. Today (August 3), Bridgdepoint closed at $13.10 — a huge …

Story updated on August 21. Two Carlsbad residents, friends since childhood, were slapped this week for insider trading that arose after they attended a concert together. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, in July …

It was golf’s celebrated United States Open, played June of 2008, at Torrey Pines. The already weak national economy was about to go into a tailspin. Tiger Woods, the god of golf, was limping around …